While I am not able to attend this years WWDC in person, I did want to ensure that I captured as much information on what was being announced.

The excitement around today has been building up for the past several months. With the ‘supposed’ leak of the prototype Apple iPhone 4, the launch of the iPad and speculation around other announcements, it should prove to be an interesting keynote. Apple has a lot of pressure on their shoulders to maintain the lead in the mobile computing space. Google Android has made significant progress this past year. In fact, it was just a year ago that RIM was seen as Apple’s major competitor. A year later, RIM has lost market share, Apple has gained and out of no where, Android is also establishing itself as a serious contendor and gaining ground.

The 2010 WWDC sold out in eight days. It was reported that there are 5,200 developers attending representing 57 countries.

The keynote started with doing an update on the iPad. Steve Jobs proclaimed that it has been a resounding success with over 2 million iPads sold in only two months. That’s one every three seconds. 8,500 apps have been optimized on the App Store specifically for the iPad. There have been downloaded 35 million times with an average of 17 apps per iPad. iBooks is getting an update based on feedback from users. There has been 5 million books downloaded in 65 days. Five out of six publishers have indicated that iBooks now represents 22% of their distribution share – that’s in only eight weeks! Based on comments, a new feature has been added. You can now read PDF files directly from iBooks. PDFs are stored on their own bookshelf.

Steve went on to state that Apple supports two platforms. The first is a fully open, uncontrolled platform, namely HTML5. The second, with over 225,000 apps available – App Store.

There are 15,000 new applications submitted to App Store each each. 95% of those apps submitted are approved within seven days. The other 5% are not approved primarily for one of three reasons.

The application does not do what the developer has stated

The developer has used private APIs

The application crashes

In the past week, Apple reported that 5 billion apps have been downloaded from the App Store. This has represented $1 billion dollars of revenue that Apple has paid to developers.

Steve Jobs next went on to provide some updates on the iPhone. First was a presentation on market statistics. Some reports are viewed as being ok while others are somewhat questionable. Two pieces of data were provided. Neilson has reported that the RIM has 35% of the market, with iPhone second with 28%, Windows Mobile third with 19% and Android fouth with 9%. iPhone also captures 58% of the mobile browser usage on the Internet.

Now on to the real part of the keynote. The new iPhone 4 has finally been announced. Jobs goes on to state that it represents the biggest jump since the original launch of the iPhone in 2007. There are over 100 new improvements with eight being initially focused on. The new iPhone is only 9.3mm thick. It is the thinnest smartphone on the market! The front facing camera is there. It uses a micro-sim card, has a rear-facing camera and LED flash, two microphones with noise cancelling. There are three distinct, stainless steel bands on the outer edge of the phone. Turns out, there are also being used as antennas for the three radios in the phone.

The display is amazing! It uses a technology known as retina display which effectively provides a resolution of 326 pixels per inch.

The new iPhone 4 is also powered by the new Apple A4 processor, the same processor that is in the iPad. Additionally, there is a new Gyro-scopic sensor in the iPhone 4 that with the GPS, accelerometer and compass is able to be completely aware of its position and orientation.

The new rear-facing camera supports up to 5 Megapixels, supports up to 5x digital zoom and has a LED flash. The camera also records HD video, up to 720p at 30fps! Also available is a new application. iMovie for iPhone! Full HD recording and built in editing with iMovie on a device you can have with you at all times.

iPhone OS 4 is next. Apple have renamed it iOS4. This is obviously intended to signal that this will be the ‘choice’ OS that will be on multiple devices, including the yet to be announced new version of the AppleTV.

Support for Bing search has also been added to Safari.

iBooks for the iPhone was also announced. This brings the book store to the iPhone. A book can be downloaded on any device (iPad, iPhone, iTouch) and available to all devices, without additional charge. iBooks will automatically sync your notes, bookmarks and place.

The famous ‘one more thing’ was next. Steve went on to demonstrate a live, video call on the iPhone 4 using an application named FaceTime. It currently only support WiFi but Apple indicated they are working with the cellular providers to make it available.

The new iPhone 4 will be available in either black or white models, support 16GB or 32GB of RAM. The 16GB model will cost $199 and the 32GB $299. The iPhone 3G has been discontinued with the iPhone 3GS now costing $99. It will ship June 24th in eight countries and will ship to another 18 (including Canada) in July. By September it will be available in 88 countries.

iOS4 will be available June 21st and will be free for all 3GS, 3G and iPod Touch users.

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About this blog

I would not have ever though of myself as a 'blogger'.

I enjoy a number of things and believe that I have learned and grown in my experiences over the years so in the spirit of sharing, I thought a blog would be an interesting way to give my thoughts and views on all things I find interesting.